~ A Network Blog by a Network Engineer

We asked, They listened!

I am betting that you do – they are Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage AND they are the closing keynote speakers for this years Cisco Live 2012 San Diego! Yes, you are reading that correctly – they will be giving the closing keynote this year at Cisco Live US. I am betting that we will have a packed house for this one – these guys are amazing – I am also betting that they will top last years guest, William Shatner, and his story about the Canoe. You can see it here: LINK All I have to say is I cannot wait to sit and listen to them – they are brilliant, funny, and all around nerdy. (Yes, I am starting to think I do have man crush on them )
I was provided a little background on our guest speakers and would like to share some of it with you, in alphabetical order:Adam Savage was Born in New York City in 1967. During his youth, Adam was know for elaborate school pranks (who would have guessed? best way to show how smart you are if you ask me). His early years he worked as a projectionist, photo developer, graphic designer, animator, set designer, actor, sculptor, and prop maker. In the summer of 1990, Adam decided that he needed to move west to San Francisco and fell into the Theater scene there. He did set design, prop maker, painter, master carpenter (that explains why those walls they make are always so perfect looking), as well as a producer. He was also involved in Northern California’s hub of machine art community and honed his skills in welding as well as all things mechanical. Over time he developed a reputation for solving difficult mechanical set problems for theaters, and that eventually caught the eye of the special effect industry. He once built the props for and art-directed a Clio nominated Coca Cola Commercial – you can see it here: LINK. Adam was also a part of George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic and worked on movies such as Star Wars, Episodes 1 and 2, Galaxy Quest, Space Cowboys, A.I., Terminator 3, The Mummy, Matrix, and many many commercials. I had no idea that he was involved with that many movies, impressive! Most famously he has been hosting a show on Discovery Channel called Mythbusters since 2003 and has tacked over 750 myths!Jamie Hyneman was raised in Indiana farm country where is father ran an apple orchard and his mother was a librarian. Jamie was a prolific reader, but also had a penchant for creative was to avoid chores around the farm (sounds like a normal kid to me). At the age of 14, Jamie traveled by thumb around the country for a number of months, alone. His parents then thought, well insisted, that because of that adventurous part of him he needed some formal survival training. Because of that training, Jamie acquired a taste for trekking into the wilderness for weeks at a time – just disappearing. Jamie graduated from Indiana University with a degree in Russian – that is impressive! After a being a Slavic collection librarian at the UN in Geneva, he decided to go to the Caribbean. There he obtained his diver masters rating as well as his captains license while running his own diving and sailing charter business. After fours years of teaching and running his own business, it became too routing and he headed back to the states and tried his hand at special effects in the New York City area. After working on several feature films and commercials, he made the leap to go west – San Francisco. Some of the movies that he has worked on include Robocop, Arachnophobia, and Naked Lunch – there are many others as well. Jamie’s M5 Industries was created out of the dot com bust where he worked for a Colossal Pictures model shop. Then Colossal closed, Jamie started M5 industries and has evolved it into a successful effects business that specializes in problematic custom builds. Jamie has been awarded an honorary engineer degree from the University of Maine, and an honorary doctorate of engineering from Villanova University.
This Did You Know has some great information in it – Much of this I did NOT know about them.DID YOU KNOW…

Adam and Jamie have appeared on numerous shows including Late Show with David Letterman,
Good Morning America, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, NPR’s All Things Considered and
Morning Edition, Countdown with Keith Olberman, and many more.

Adam and Jamie were invited to participate in Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Rally to Restore
Fear And/Or Sanity

Adam and Jamie received the Young Artist Award for inspiring young people in the interest of
science

Adam and Jamie serve as guest editors for Popular Mechanics and they were featured on the
cover of the September 2009 issue

Adam and Jamie were named Honorary Lifetime Members of the California Science Teachers
Association

The Mythbusters series was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2009 & 2010

Adam and Jamie were chosen by the President to retest the Archimedes legend using 500
schoolchildren as surrogate soldiers

Adam and Jamie produced and starred in an H1N1 Public Service Announcement for the White
House

In 2009, Adam and Jamie were inducted as honorary members into Sigma Xi, the Scientific
Research Society

Adam and Jamie were invited to participate in President Obama’s STEM initiative

Adam and Jamie have been named Honorary Engineers and Honorary Members of the Francis
Crowe Society at the University of Maine

The Mythbusters was the only reality show invited to participate on a panel at Comic-Con. Their
panel sold out two years in a row.

Adam and Jamie appeared as themselves in the movie Darwin Awards and have made several
cameos on other TV shows, including CSI

In 2010, Adam and Jamie received the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural
Humanism from the Harvard Secular Society